This is a point that non-cyclists miss: a bike going below (say) 4mph is quite unstable (and at 0mph has to put a foot down). Forcing cyclists to accelerate from a stop -- shifting gears as they do so and worrying about stability -- puts them in a dangerous spot.
Bike commuter here in a large city: yes, we definitely do stuff like that for safety. As a cyclist you don't want to be stopped in amongst cars at a red light when it turns green, so the standard thing to do is lane-split, then watch the pedestrian signals and haul ass as soon as cross traffic stops during their yellow.
That way all the cars have plenty of time to see the bikers and not hit them, and we've got more clear road to see potholes and shit without traffic all around.
Well, the roads have to still be constructed to handle those big trucks. If the cyclists are going to pay tax for infrastructure, there's no need to waste money building things that can handle ten-ton trucks (and as a consequence can't handle the weather).
Let's say you are detecting light from a fluorescent lamp. It has some mercury atoms in it which are excited by an electric current, and their de-excitation causes the emission of a visible light photon.
You can compute the transition amplitude and figure out how long, on average, it will take to spit out a photon. (You do this by applying time-dependent perturbation theory coupling the two quantum states with a dipole-transition electric field, to first order.) But you can't predict exactly when the photon will come out, only the probability that it will in a certain time interval.
Well, what drive is it on?
Tell them: in this OS there is one filesystem, and the stuff on your drives is attached to various places on it. So you might have one drive at
Why is my thumb drive copied to the hard disk when I put it in?
It's not -- it's attached somewhere to the filesystem.
Why does Loinox use the wrong slashes?
Because / means divide, and it's a directory divider.
Seriously, if you can't understand this after fifteen minutes of explanation you shouldn't be paid to fuck with computers.
Do people really get degrees in IT fields without studying Unix?
Serious question -- I'm a scientist and everybody works with it at some time or other, and a computational physics course using C on Linux is standard fare. At the grad school I went to, there were shared Linux workstations in all the graduate student offices, just as a matter of course, and if you didn't know how to use them you figured it out.
Can you really get a whole degree in computers without touching Unix?
Training people to use Linux is pretty simple unless they're dense. I've known quite a lot of nontechnical people who, when presented with LXDE or similar, go "oh, okay, this is pretty easy" and proceed to do all their shit just like they did before, except the slashes go the other way.
many professionals struggle to understand UNIX-style paths
Wait, really?
There are IT professionals who have trouble with the idea that
Given that the US set back the progress of polio vaccination in the Muslim world by a bogus vaccination campaign designed to hunt down Bin Laden's DNA, wankers fighting over power are in a very real sense responsible for the resurgence of polio.
This is so goddamn true.
I hate Blackboard. So do the students.
[1] Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly.
To "create assignments", I make a pdf in my favorite pdf-maker, then post it on the course website (a plain HTML page with links), then tell the students about it.
To "collect assignments", I tell the students to email them to the course submission email -- shared between the lead instructor and the grader, if there is one.
They can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
I don't have the time to play policeman ("I see little Susie hasn't even started coding yet and the homework's due tomorrow"); if Susie wants my help she has my email.
[2] Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
I can best "improve class communications" by talking to the damn students. If they want to talk to me and I'm around, there's email or coming by my office; if I don't respond to either, then chances are I won't be reachable by google widget, either.
[3] Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what's due on their Assignments page.'
They can easily see what's due by visiting the course website and seeing "Homework 4 (link) -- due Monday, April 14".
Sorting things by assignment and by student is as simple as asking them to include their name and the assignment number in their submission, and running a perl script. For less technically inclined teachers, use whatever file-sifting features your OS of choice has.
I've seen highly-technologized courses run way off the rails, because there's a delusion that fancy computerization can take the place of talking to the students. It can't. The only instructional technology I really have a need for is:
1) The computers that we actually use (I teach computational physics)
2) A projector, so I can show them examples
3) A website, where they can download shit (pdf's of assignments and notes) and see what's due
4) Email
You'd be wrong about that, then.
Most Arizonan gun-rights advocates see the right to be armed as an extension of personal property rights, and the right to exclude armed people from your own property is also an exercise of personal property rights. They won't raise a legal objection to someone saying "no guns on my property, please", because they think that people can exclude anyone from their property, and that's their choice to make.
Given that the presence of guns is far more weakly correlated with murder than the presence of crack cocaine, why don't we create a Federal law banning smoking crack instead? I mean, it's not even grown here, and crackheads need a constant supply. It should be easier to keep out the crack than the guns, I'd think.
Does the law in Georgia require bars to permit armed patrons, or does it give them the right to choose?
Arizona law says that a bar is just like any other private property: the property owner has the right to decide under what conditions people can enter. Most bars there have "No firearms" signs, and people get on with their lives. A bar owner could choose to allow armed patrons to enter, but they generally don't.
Go read the ruling in Heller and then come back.
There are pages of reasoned discussion as to what "arms" means.
"The medium is the massage." -- Crazy Nigel
